Automated computer device monitoring services are commonplace in the information technology world today. All types and variations of computers, handheld devices, laptops, smartphones, servers, terminals or other computing devices are generally part of a communication network. As a result, computing devices have been utilizing automated network services to centrally manage and monitor various features, such as, device performance and activity. For example, a laptop or desktop computer operated by an employee of a corporation may receive multiple daily management processes from a remote server during the course of day.
Examples of management processes may include monitoring services which monitor and/or maintain records of processor use, memory availability, application use, hard disk space, updated software drivers and patches, etc. However, it is not a simple task to monitor hundreds or even thousands of computers across an entire enterprise. For instance, the individual computers have customized applications and vary in the amount of memory and other resource objects utilized by the computers. Furthermore, in the event that a user's computer objects are exceeding optimal device settings and/or are below optimal resource thresholds, it may be necessary to alarm the monitoring service so that appropriate action may be taken.
Previous monitoring applications require a customized or individualized “monitor set” of objects and corresponding thresholds which must be established to designate a set of alarms. For example, for each computing device to be monitored, counters may be used as numerical representations of monitored items. The returned values of counters may vary depending on the types and setup configurations of different machines. Varying counter values are a regular occurrence since common monitoring objects, such, as disk space, memory, etc. differ significantly per computing device.
Previous monitoring procedures require the network administrator to perform the time-consuming, expensive and arduous task of creating individual monitor sets for each computing device on a network. Across an entire enterprise, the number of different monitor sets may be in the hundreds or even the thousands.